Safe harbor: Gold rises as stocks sink

It’s another golden age for goldbugs, said Jack Ryan in Bloomberg. The price of the glittery metal “passed $3,000 an ounce for the first time ever” last week and is up nearly 14 percent this year, outperforming other assets, including Bitcoin. Though not quite at early-1980s levels—when soaring inflation pushed gold up to an inflation-adjusted peak of $3,800 an ounce—crossing the $3,000 threshold “drives home gold’s centuries-old role as a store of value in turbulent times.” Jumps in its price tend to “track broader economic and political stress” as investors look for safer havens for their money. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 also triggered a surge in bullion buying by central banks such as China’s and India’s seeking to diversify their reserves. But gold has performed remarkably well now for a long time. In the last quarter-century, its “price has risen 10-fold, outperforming even the S&P 500, which quadrupled over the same period.”

Small investors are increasingly gold-curious, said Polina Devitt in Reuters. “The number of people buying gold for the first time on BullionVault’s online market jumped in February to the highest since May 2021.” Holdings of gold exchange-traded funds, which track the price of gold without the need for investors to hold the physical metal, have “climbed 68.1 tons, a gain of 4.3 percent” in the U.S. this year.